Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Rev. Don Steele

Rev. Don Steele has moved to our area from Pittsburgh. He and his partner, Jeffrey, and son, Davidson, attend our congregation. We have given Don the title "Assistant to the Pastor" as Don has been helping me with ministry here especially since Zach's death. Don is honorably retired and this is a volunteer position.

Don has requested that Holston Presbytery receive him as a member by transfer from Pittsburgh Presbytery. Our presbytery's Committee on Ministry has discussed this request and has voted. Twice. Both votes ended in a tie, which means no. The COM decided to let the presbytery as a whole decide. Yesterday at the September meeting, Don presented his Faith Journey and his Faith Statement (printed below) and verbally spoke to the presbytery about his sense of call.

I sent this email to my congregation today about the meeting:

I was proud and moved by Don's statements. He also addressed the presbytery and talked about his ministry. We broke into small groups and discussed what it might mean to welcome Don into the presbytery. The presbytery will vote in December. That vote will have no bearing on Don's relationship to our congregation. He is part of our family and can serve here as he wishes. It is, however, an opportunity for the presbytery to receive a gift. Whether the presbytery votes to receive Don as a member or not, Don will be present in the presbytery and so will our congregation.

As I have been reflecting on the meeting, I thought how much I admire Don for his courage and for his vulnerability. We are all gifts and we all have gifts. While some may regard Don as a threat more than a gift, nevertheless, he truly is a gift in many ways, and one of those ways is his honesty with the church about his life. His courage is a gift to other LGBT people who because of social prejudice must for their survival live in secret. He offers hope that it will not always be that way.

It was good to see Holston Presbytery hear Don respectfully. Even as people have different opinions regarding abstract notions such as "homosexuality" or "the authority of scripture" and while some people may never come to an acceptance of Don's sexuality, nonetheless, change happens. As Myra Elder (our commissioner who really has the last name "Elder") reminded us in the car on the way home, "We didn't flip a light switch; we planted a tree."

Of course, I am reminded how important this congregation is to this area, to Holston Presbytery, and to the denomination. For that, I give thanks to you and to all who have journeyed with us along this path, planting trees of acceptance, wisdom, and strength.

I asked Don for permission to post his statements on my blog and he graciously granted it. I also post this picture of him when he marched with us in Kingsport's Martin Luther King, Jr. parade this January. We love you, Don.

Faith Journey-Donald M. Steele

October 31, 2011

In the life of a 64 year- old, there are more stories than can be encompassed in one page, At the outset, I would simply note that for me as for most pilgrims, the journey is not so much the story of my growth in faith as in God’s faithfulness in the warp and woof of the weaving of my life. Along the way, I taught in a Catholic middle school related to the Schools of the Sacred Heart, whose founder, Saint Catherine Drexel, saw as the goal of education to see a student, “seriously begun.” I hope that at age 64, I am perhaps at last “Seriously begun” and trust that the “One who began a good work in me will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 1:6) Since there is so much to tell, I will try to describe the journey in strands for God’s weaving rather than chronological events.

Strand One- Illness
My earliest serious illness began during my first pastorate in Hinton, WV, where I was sent to the Mayo Clinic and hospitalized with my first severe bout with asthma. Other health challenges have included epilepsy, osteoporosis resulting in a broken back due to the seizures, and lymphoma. Later, a dangerous asthma attack in Chicago again hospitalized me and led to a prescription of a warmer, drier, less polluted climate, which opened a door to accepting a call to Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gallup, NM adjacent to the Navajo and Zuni reservations. My service there was interrupted by a serious stroke, which left me unable to continue due to partial paralysis and partial blindness. In 2011, advanced arthritis led to a knee replacement with complications prolonging the recovery during rehab. Through it all, I have experienced God’s presence as healer, companion, and comforter.

Strand Two – Social Justice
In many ways my parents laid the groundwork for my growing involvement in issues of social justice. As staunch members of the rural Presbyterian Church in middle Tennessee where I grew up, with their influence and that of my Scottish immigrant grandfather, who lived with us until his death, our home was very Calvinist in its practices with no cooking, sewing or movies on Sundays. We did not eat out or do grocery shopping on Sundays, and so we didn’t participate in an economy that required others to work on the Sabbath. It was an early lesson in putting beliefs into action for justice. My parents also did not support the negative images, language, or actions that upheld segregation at the time.

It was not surprising then that when my college choice took me to Southwestern at Memphis, now Rhodes College, I became very active in civil rights concerns and actions, especially in the garbage workers’ strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis and his death. This affected me profoundly as I viewed Dr. King as one who was “persecuted for righteousness sake.” During these years I experienced and began to follow my sense of call to ministry. At Union Seminary in Virginia, I became active in the peacemaking movement in response to the Viet Nam war. Following seminary, I understood my call to be to ministry in Appalachia, and I accepted the first of four calls in the region.

After Hinton, I served concurrently as pastor in Spencer, WV, as coordinator of CAM, the Coalition for Appalachian Ministry and as Special Presbyter for Appalachian Ministry for the Presbytery of Greenbrier. In these capacities I worked to address the social justice issues of the region including land use and abuse, mine and factory safety, and land ownership and control. With the blessing of my third WV parish in Charleston, I also participated in the WV Delegation of Witness for Peace in Nicaragua. Growing out of my regional work, I became increasingly involved in issues of national and world hunger, and after additional study at the Maryknoll School of Theology’s Institute for Justice and Peace, I accepted a call as Associate Director for International Relief and Development with the Presbyterian Hunger Program, and made on-site visits in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, as well as the U.S., monitoring and encouraging programs to address root causes of hunger. Health concerns dictated that I decline the opportunity to move with the national staff to Louisville, and instead, went to Graduate Theological Union to pursue a Ph.D. In Berkeley, CA., in addition to teaching pastoral theology, ethics, and spirituality at two seminaries, a middle school and a graduate school, I participated in the support for migrant farm workers.

During these years, I also had to come to terms with the personal issue that tested most profoundly my trust in God’s faithfulness, as after listening in counseling to numerous students who were struggling with their sexual identity, I came belatedly to understand my own orientation and to self-identify as gay. I had long since known that gay, like other human conditions, is a gift, but 24 years into a committed marriage and ordination in a denomination that did not allow gay clergy, I pleaded with God. “Could it please not be my gift!” God, on the other hand, already knew me and was big enough to handle my shame and grief at hurting my wife, who had shared so much of the journey. With the help of excellent therapy and many courageous and faithful gay Christian friends, I “came out” first to myself, then to my wife, and eventually to others in the church and institutions where I worked.

That process has continued to this time, but I was committed that no employer would choose me without first knowing this aspect of my truth, so they would not hear after the fact and wish they might have made another decision. This included my service at the School of Applied Theology in Oakland, at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, at Children’s Hospital in Chicago, where I was chaplain, at three ”More Light” congregations, where I was Parish Associate, and at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gallup, NM., where I was solo pastor. A disabling stroke ended my service there due to partial paralysis and partial blindness. The Presbytery of Santa Fe granted me the status of Honorably Retired. Despite my disability, Sixth Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh allowed me to serve as Parish Associate. In Pittsburgh I was also able to volunteer as a teacher in a faith-based, non sectarian college prep school for low-income minority students, which has sent all of its graduates on to college – the first in their families to do so. If I am received, I hope to serve in some meaningful ways in the Presbytery of Holston.

I am thankful that First Presbyterian Church in Elizabethton is a More Light congregation as well, to allow me to worship with my deeply spiritual partner of 17 years, Jeffrey Watkins, who is also my nurse. In all these matters, it has been God who was faithful to me on the journey. Thus I can say with hymn writer, John Newton,” Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come, ‘twas Grace that brought me safe thus far, and Grace will lead me home.” Thanks be to God!

Strand Three – Ecumenical Relationships in Education and Service
Though Presbyterians played the largest role in my formal education in college, seminary, and graduate school, I have also been equipped and expanded by institutions, and programs planned and led by Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, National Baptists, Roman Catholics, and Jews. Not surprisingly, then, I have found great joy in being a brother in the ecumenical Franciscan religious order, the Mercy of God Community, whose core commitment is to work to “overcome the scandalous divisions within Christianity.” With the current national climate of distrust of other faiths, that commitment is expanding to include overcoming the harm done to others (both Christian and non-) in the name of Christ.

Strand Four - Family and Friends
All along the way, God has blessed me with wonderful family and remarkable friends. My afore-mentioned parents and grandfather helped me to get started. Cynthia, my former wife of twenty-four years, who remains a special friend, my adult son, Davidson, my brother, Lewis, nieces, Li and Claire and their families, extended family members and particularly my partner and skilled caregiver of 17 years, Jeffrey Watkins, have all been incredibly supportive and loyal through many joys and sorrows. They have been multiplied by many parishioners and friends beyond any deserving, who have sustained my hope, courage and faith along the way and witnessed to God’s steadfast love, forgiveness, and mercy. One Friend in particular, Baptist pastor and educator, the Rev. Dr. Brian Ammons of Durham, North Carolina, has accompanied me through many of the most difficult days.

Strand Five - The Future is open because of the Faithfulness of God
Just as “the past is prologue, “ So the future is God’s Finishing School to which I gratefully commit.

Statement of Faith - Donald M. Steele

October 31, 2011

In the beginning, GOD
Who created and continues to create the heavens and earth, the universe, all creatures and all humanity, including me. This God is revealed most clearly in the Scriptures, our unique and authoritative rule of faith and practice and entrusts to us the care and stewardship of the earth.

In the midst of life, (in the Fullness of time) GOD
Was incarnate in Jesus – Emmanuel, God -with- us – a Palestinian Jew, whom I have come to love and confess as the Christ or Messiah, who came as teacher, healer, reconciler, justice-seeker, prophet and Savior for all humankind. Jesus calls ordinary women and men into discipleship and the church catholic, eats with outcasts, teaches that all are children of God, heals the sick, and demonstrates the realm of God, and in his life, death on the cross and resurrection reveals the lengths to which God will go to in order to show mercy and bring life to all, to show that no one , absolutely no one is expendable. When Jesus returned to God, God sent the Holy Spirit as comforter and energizer who empowers the church to live as Christ’s body in the world today.

In the end, GOD,
Who like the prodigal Father runs to meet the children and welcome us home, and Who like a mother hen gathers us together and offers comfort and safety, and Who in Jesus goes before us to show us the way.